Pages of Interest

Thursday, January 15, 2015

WITHERING HOPE by Layla Hagen

Excerpt:

(Aimee’s POV)

"Just stay with for a little while,
please. I need you so much, Aimee." The sound of my name from his mouth
awakens something in me that has me writhing in a blazing torture. It’s doing
things to me it shouldn't do.

"Shh, okay. I'll stay. I know it helps
having someone."

"Not someone. You. You make the
memories bearable, the present better. You have an unbelievably strong will to
keep going, even if you don't know where you're heading, hoping you'll find
something worthy at the end of the road. You have an inherent ability to pick
up the good on the way—those that give you strength, the happy things, like
your poems—and you go on. You pass that strength onto others, even if it costs
you sleep and peace.

“I used to hate waking up every morning.
Now I look forward to every day, even though we're stuck in this place. Because
it means one more day with you." He caresses my lips with his thumb. I
open my mouth, but he shakes his head. "Don't say anything, please."

For a long moment, we are silent, our gazes
locked. I breathe in his hot breaths, tension crackling in the short distance
between our lips. Then he pulls me into a kiss. The touch of his lips on mine
electrifies me, shimmer after shimmer coursing through my nerve endings. His
tongue takes mine in a primal claim. Icy shivers splinter my skin, and at the
same time, fire awakens deep within me. I've never been kissed like this.
Ferociously, with absolute, desperate need. I try to temper the heated emotions
building inside me. I try to remember it's wrong. But that fleeting thought is
drowned by the heat igniting his lips and hands, and I surrender.

Tristan
deepens the kiss until I'm out of breath. I become aware of his hard chest muscles,
of every line and every ridge, as my hands roam wildly with a greed I don't
recognize. His hands graze my body, traveling from my back to my thighs,
spreading the fire in my center; I'm convinced it will consume me. With a jolt,
he pulls me even closer to him, so I'm all but straddling him. His fingers
fumble with my hair, as his blessed mouth cradles mine, coaxing a whimper from
me.

Aimee’s
wedding is supposed to turn out perfect. Her dress, her fiancé and the
location—the idyllic holiday ranch in Brazil—are perfect.

But
all Aimee’s plans come crashing down when the private jet that’s taking her
from the U.S. to the ranch—where her fiancé awaits her—defects mid-flight and
the pilot is forced to perform an emergency landing in the heart of the Amazon
rainforest.

With
no way to reach civilisation, being rescued is Aimee and Tristan’s—the
pilot—only hope. A slim one that slowly withers away, desperation taking its
place. Because death wanders in the jungle under many forms: starvation,
diseases. Beasts.

As Aimee and Tristan fight to find ways to survive, they grow closer. Together
they discover that facing old, inner agonies carved by painful pasts takes just
as much courage, if not even more, than facing the rainforest.

Despite
her devotion to her fiancé, Aimee can’t hide her feelings for Tristan—the man
for whom she’s slowly becoming everything. You can hide many things in the
rainforest. But not lies. Or love.

Withering
Hope is the story of a man who desperately needs forgiveness and the woman who
brings him hope. It is a story in which hope births wings and blooms into a
love that is as beautiful and intense as it is forbidden.

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